Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/163197
The trick will be making sure all those leaders don't end up tripping over one another, or worse, waiting for someone else to step up and take hold of a situation rather than attacking it themselves. Great armies need a general. Great bands need a front man. The old football cliché about a team with two starting quarterbacks really having none could easily be replaced by a similar maxim about leaders. Kelly, though, has seen enough from this year's team during a tumultuous offseason that he said he never felt the need to address that possibility. "I don't know that that has ever been, with this group, an issue," he said. "There's not a lot of chatter over each other. Most of them are guys that just go and do their job and get their work done. … We haven't had that issue of too many chiefs on the defensive side of the ball." Part of that credit has to go to defensive coordinator Bob Diaco, whose consistent approach has helped to build a structure of clear expectations that doesn't require someone to always be shepherding the herd toward the team's goals. Part of it goes to the players who have hung tightly to their own personalities rather than trying to mimic someone they are not. Notre Dame's somewhat-headless horse of a defense is an experiment that has yet to reach its conclusion, but no one inside the Irish locker room seems to be concerned. ✦ In Their Own Words There's not one way to be a leader, and Notre Dame's variety of personalities on this year's defense are proof. This August, the Irish coaches, the veterans and their teammates took the time to describe their personal style. CB Bennett Jackson: "He interacts extremely well with all players. To be a captain you can't be just seen as somebody that just sits on one side of the ball. These are guy that we want to interact with our entire football team." — Head coach Brian Kelly LB Dan Fox: "The coaches do a great job of not trying to shape anyone into anything they're not. We are who we are, and that's something we know." — Fox LB Prince Shembo: "There's not a guy in the unit that has been more consistent with demeanor and attitude and intensity and attack and knowledge. He is the heart and soul of that front." — Defensive coordinator Bob Diaco LB Carlo Calabrese: "It's about having the younger kids come up to you and ask you about the plays and ask you questions about anything. I like it. I enjoy it a lot. I take a lot of pride in that. You have to show the younger players what our team is about." — Calabrese S Matthias Farley: "I've always grown up with the impression that you lead by example and just work hard. If something needs to be corrected or needs to be put in place or whatever it may be, I have no reservations about doing it. I just work hard and try to help wherever I can." — Farley NG Louis Nix: "When I improve myself I think it helps the team. Just like any individual when people see each other working hard it makes them want to work hard. We all try to push each other. When we see a guy falling down we try to push them." — Nix